


The Merciless Reshaping of a Perfectly Average Doctor

by lynnotline



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: Case Fic, First Time, M/M, Mild Depictions of Illness, Pining, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-24
Updated: 2018-01-24
Packaged: 2019-03-08 18:37:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13464174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynnotline/pseuds/lynnotline
Summary: Watson’s blind spot was perhaps the most fundamental part of who he was.





	The Merciless Reshaping of a Perfectly Average Doctor

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place within the Sherlock Holmes movie universe without explanation or Mary, because I can. It could also definitely be read as TV Sherlock and John during The Abominable Bride period.

**The Merciless Reshaping of a Perfectly Average Doctor**

Holmes was playing violin. At four AM.

This auditory nuisance was rather customary of the man, expected even, but nonetheless Watson found himself quite cross as he jolted awake. He needed _sleep_ , as did every other ordinary human being on this earth, and the fact that his flatting companion was as extraordinary as they came was not going to stop him from gaining his allotted eight hours of blessed unconsciousness.

“ _Holmes_ ,” he said loudly, and the music paused.

Watson blinked blearily at the dark stretch of wall hiding Holmes and waited, familiar with this game of pause and play. He was aware even in his befuddled state that Holmes would somehow know the precise instant Watson opened his mouth to continue and would consequently begin playing again.

Watson knew the detective like he knew nothing else, not even his medical profession, and that was a vaguely disconcerting train of thought so early in the day.

Watson thought he heard the whisper of Holmes’s violin bow on strings, and he hurriedly barrelled onward, “Would you stop that _infernal_ racket, and at this time of the morning? There are some of us who do not enjoy the murdered renditions of classics come dawn.”

Watson sniffed, satisfied for now. The floorboards beneath his bed creaked, and he thought that his chastising had landed somewhere of importance by how Holmes had not immediately resumed his playing. Watson thought sleepily of the days when he was not awoken by a tortured violin, or the flames of an experiment gone awry, or smoky hazardous gas from an experiment gone to plan. The dark smudges beneath his eyes may be ingrained now, but he couldn’t even pretend to want those mundane times back.

He rolled over to face the other side of his room.

Holmes was there.

“Christ- _Holmes_ ,” Watson gasped as he jerked back in his bed. The detective stood idly, adorned not by his worn robe but by his crisp suit, flicking the end of his violin bow with one nail. His cool eyes, darkly rimmed, ticked up to the doctor’s with a coaly glimmer of amusement.

“Paganini,” he said conversationally, “is not infernal and incidentally, I play the piece precisely how it was written.”

Watson sniffed again, harder this time, drew the bed covers up to his chin self-consciously. “That may be so,” he allowed, feeling his heart stutter back into a relatively normal rhythm, “but I should think that it was not composed to be played upon ears deaf with slumber.”

Holmes’s mouth flashed white at that, his grin sharp in the dark.

“Come now, old boy!” He waved his hand, flicked his wrist elegantly at Watson’s curtain and a shard of hazed light illuminated the room. It fell across Watson’s bed and the doctor turned his face away. “The morn is nearly upon us – the sun certainly is – and who are we to deny nature’s timely clock?”

Watson griped into his pillow, cotton against his teeth. He was uncomfortable with being lit up and so keenly observed while his companion was in the shadows, ever shrouded with darkness. “More pressingly, Holmes; who are _you_ to deny _my_ clock?”

Holmes chuckled shortly and Watson felt a hotness on the back of his neck, a certain prickling of his skull that came with the knowledge that he was still in his bed-shorts and Holmes was so tidy and clean and the world was fuzzy-edged around them.

“State one good reason I should allow you to further accost me,” Watson said, before Holmes could assert something terribly cocky and inarguably charming, and he stole a glance of the detective from beneath his eyelashes. Holmes’s profile was obscured, hard to divine where the slope of his collarbone and shoulder ended and darkness began, and that was only fitting.

Holmes briefly closed his eyes, and then curled his lip, preening, and Watson thought that he was going to get spoiled if Holmes continued smiling like that, and so often. The tiny angle of his mouth was a hook in the doctor’s skin.

“My good man, I can give you twenty-seven reasons – possibly twenty-four if you argue with me on some points, which is unavoidable. However, I shall only voice one.”

Holmes waited, ever theatrical, until Watson sighed and rolled onto his back, propped himself up on one elbow. Holmes’s black eyes were a shock better than coffee, awoke Watson just like gunshots or opium or other dangerous things would. “Yes?”

“We have a case.”

*

It was, Holmes explained in the hansom cab, a case of a distraught mother and a stoic father and an abundance of ignorant socialites and unaware proletariat. One of mankind’s oldest tales, he thought, and Watson, my lad, isn’t it perplexing how the reign of humans shall forever be denoted as _man_ kind, regardless of how women are just as human as men are and- what’s that, old boy? Why yes, the case, the case.

There was a mother and a father and extras, and there was a missing child. Stolen, vanished, and Holmes’s skin was already humming with the chase.

“Why has this so caught your interest?” Watson inquired, the carriage bumping along the dusty roads and knocking against cobblestone. The smog was ample outside, too thick to spy through and the sunlight too early to cut through it, and so Watson settled himself to watch his companion. Holmes was little more than a shadow on the seat, a vibrating bundle of coats and the sharp angle of ceaselessly shifting hands, and Watson’s gaze was arrested helplessly. “You generally fancy your endeavours to be a trifle more… perilous. The details you have described for me paint a picture of Scotland Yard saving the young one. Is this not merely-”

“Child’s play?” Holmes suggested, and Watson snorted before he could wrestle the reaction down.

It was ill-mannered and uncouth, he knew; a child’s life may be at stake, or a mother’s sanity, but suffering momentary lapse in all of his civil practices was a strange phenomenon that sometimes occurred around Holmes. These sorts of things, Watson had decided some period ago, were writ in blood, simply waiting for a catalyst to spur them to life; cats made the good doctor sneeze, and Sherlock Holmes, on occasion, disarmed his every instinct and struck him utterly dumb.

So it was.

Watson had and did spend many a moment trying to dislike Holmes for the changes he had wrangled in him, for the pure simple fact that Holmes had been remodelling the doctor with his bare hands since their first acquaintance. It never worked. He was not perturbed.

Watson threw a damper on his smile regardless.

“’Tis too early and too hopeful for humour so black, my friend,” Watson said not unkindly, and Holmes spared him an amused glance with weighted eyes, smirk bending his mouth. The expression scraped the inside of Watson’s stomach and he shifted calmly, tugging on the edges of his coat.

“Black humour is nothing more than humour when the world itself is devoid of all light,” Holmes told his friend, and then added quite casually, “The missing child has been dead for two years. Her grave was robbed yesterday.”

Watson thought that Holmes’ reshaping of him must’ve been something akin to an entire stage of evolution for how that statement did not touch his mood. It might have been the proximity of the hansom, with Holmes’s knee against Watson’s and the detective’s eyes looking like they were going to leave coaly smudges everywhere. Perhaps Watson was just sleep deprived.

He looked to the world outside, and then back to his friend.

“Ah.”

*

Lady Luxemburg was beside herself not with grief, but rather with matters of status.

“It’s simply not _right_ ,” she was explaining, and had been doing so for the last half hour. She was seated in front of Holmes and Watson on uncomfortable but very fanciful chairs, everyone present clutching a hot cup of tea for dear life except the Lord of the house, who was standing rather remotely by their lavishly adorned fireplace. He cast them a vaguely despairing look across the expansive main hall, or perhaps that was his general mien.

“The first wrongdoing here is that I, a mother, had to bury my own daughter those years ago. There truly should be a law against that, you know,” and then she gave Holmes a stern look, as though this was a legislative matter he personally had neglected. “Burying my own legacy, it’s just against nature. I could barely compose myself for any of the formal ceremonies, just ask Edmund.”

She produced a handkerchief from her generous bosom and proceeded to dab her notably dry eyes before gesturing to her husband, who remained aloof. Her mystically-coloured skirts and gown-layers rippled, the visual effect vaguely nauseating.

Watson steadied himself with weary resignation for Holmes’s rant about the surety of loss, about how the defining facet of all existence and the singular fact upon which one could always rely was that everything can, has, and indeed will, fall apart.

It didn’t come.

Holmes sipped his tea and gestured for the Lady to continue. She hmm’ed tactfully at his silence and Watson glanced at his companion, attempting to employ his insightful air to discern the detective’s mind and noticing only a stray tea leaf on Holmes’s right thumb. Watson’s hands itched to brush it away.

“And to think!” Lady Luxemburg said, quite horrified. “I have to go through it all again with this recent crime.”

A composed maid entered the vast room and her footfalls echoed as she delivered a tray of triangular-cut sandwiches and biscuits. The Lady shooed her away without much thought.

“To have my daughter’s… _remains_ ,” she whispered it like a dirty word, “stolen, how horrible. It’s for money, I am telling you Mister Holmes. My family is very _known_ , you see, and the ceremonies for my daughter were quite something, I doubt that anyone has yet forgotten them. Poor dear, she just developed a cough and never recovered…” She blinked and drew herself up importantly, an abundance of jewellery rattling. “So if we do not soon receive word of ransom then I have no doubt they are selling her to some ruffian or, or, occult or some such nonsense. Her bones will be worth a lot, see, as is anything with the surname Luxemburg.”

Holmes had been nodding diligently this whole time and Watson knew only he could see the thinly veiled disgust beneath his earnest expression. He supposed he appeared much the same. Nonetheless Watson knew the expectations, and he looked away from Holmes so that he might keep his head about him.

“We are deeply sorry for your many grievances, my Lady,” he said lowly, and she psh’ed him with a wave of her handkerchief.

“Grievances? Oh, Doctor, what of our _name_?” she implored. “What will the other Lords say? Oh, dear, we must send word to our friends at once! Edmund, darling, we must prevent this occurrence from slandering our family name in the future, please do assist me!”

He retracted himself from the wall after a moment and wandered over, seeming at once massively bored and highly disdainful. His suit was incredibly crisp, as black and white as his wife’s gown was red and purple. Watson wondered if they even liked each other.

“You’ll forgive the oversight of my wife, I’m sure; she’s suffering from one too many blows at the moment.” His grey eyes rested on Watson, and his mouth twitched in a smile. “You’re a medical man, good sir; I do believe she’s in shock, yes?”

Watson had been sharing a look with Holmes, as he sometimes did during cases, the detective attempting to relinquish preternaturally divined information through the capturing obsidian of his eyes and Watson attempting to collate it, and suddenly he realised he was required to answer. He nodded immediately, said, “Absolutely, my Lord, displaying all of the symptoms. It’s perfectly normal, I assure you.”

Watson saw the glint of Holmes’s teeth in a snicker and wished to stomp on his foot, a grin of his own held tightly back, half delirious on these boyish, foolhardy instances of theirs. They relentlessly broke the social norms right beneath the noses of nobles and it was forthrightly addictive. “If you wish I can fix her a tonic, for any lasting issues.”

Lady Luxemburg shook her husband’s hand off her shoulder. “Nonsense, Edmund, I’m fine. No medication will be required, thank you Doctor.”

She stood with many a metal jangle and reached a hand toward them both, which they kissed after a beat. She shook herself. “I hope I have been useful, gentlemen, and I thank you for embracing this case. Now, I must depart for I have many messages to send, but do feel free to inspect whatever necessary and interrogate whomever you deem fit.” Her expression was one of faint contempt, clearly convinced that she and her husband were the only ones worth speaking with in the entire mansion.

Watson and Holmes stood as Lord and Lady Luxemburg left, and the instant they were out of the room Holmes grasped Watson’s elbow to gain his attention.

“Well, I say,” he sighed, raising his eyebrows lazily. “What a repulsive duo.”

Watson pulled away from him, aghast. “Holmes! We are in their dwellings; please _do_ show them the proper respect.”

Holmes huffed lightly and smiled sideways at Watson, making the doctor simultaneously feel like he was in on and the butt of some secretive, conniving joke. Watson ignored the heat on the back of his neck in favour of watching the wheels twist in Holmes’s eyes.

“So?” Watson said, gesturing. He gripped his cane and turned away from Holmes for something to do. “What conclusions have you drawn thus far?”

“So far so obvious, old boy.”

Watson just barely stopped himself from rolling his eyes.

“Oh yes?”

“Yes indeed.”

Watson knew Holmes was itching for an audience and so dutifully returned his gaze to the detective, held back his silly grin at Holmes’s eccentric antics through only sheer force of will.

He wondered at the sight they must have made, how unbecoming of a man it was to be so expressive, particularly to a mere colleague. Watson thought that this was merely another irreparable change Holmes had instigated, this giddiness akin to falling off a cliff-face that Holmes always brought out of him, as though they were still schoolboys gallivanting about without the worry of having to act like gentlemen.

Holmes cut his scarf through the air as he was prone to and wrapped it firmly around his neck. “The only respect due to the good Lady Luxemburg is for that of her monetary insight; indeed, her daughter’s remains were stolen for money, although I do feel that the circumstances of the theft rely heartily on convenience and not status.”

Watson inclined his head, wondering if there was any point in inquiring how Holmes had gathered these clues. He opened his mouth, but Holmes was in the mood to speak in paragraphs, barely pausing for breath, the skin of his cheeks flushed a beautiful colour and his eyes huge flitting obsidians.

“Convenience, yes, Watson, convenience.” Holmes began sweeping around the room and examining things seemingly at random. Here, he intently studied the silver dish upon which the food had arrived; there, he licked at a notebook cover before sniffing deeply at its counterpart pen. All the while, his mouth ran like water:

“You had to have noticed, old boy, it’s almost a physical aroma, a tangible sense in the air. Someone on this estate is in grief, true grief, hurting like their own heart has been skewered.” He met Watson’s eyes briefly before running a finger down the length of the hearth. “So convenience, yes, because as well as grief there is a genuine odour of cheap medicine, amateur remedies that will not work and thus have been accepted out of desperation. We are looking for someone nearly stripped of all money and whose lover or family member is gravely ill.”

Watson regarded his friend sceptically. “And you deduced all this from the scents in the air?”

Holmes had the decency to look affronted for at least a moment before he grinned boyishly, his eyes maddeningly alight and Watson simply could not bring himself to look away.

“The maid had been crying,” he said, flapping a hand toward the kitchen. “There was a spatter of the latest cure-all elixir on her apron, about six drops near the hem, so it is not she who is ill but whomever she has been feeding it to; they do not have the strength to even sit up. They are very near death, I feel, and so does she. She needs money for a cure.”

Watson’s mouth suddenly felt full of ash. “That’s,” he uttered, and then paused, collecting himself. “Will I be able to help? The ill, I mean?”

Holmes strode toward Watson and took his friend’s coat into his hands, snapped it shortly into place. He smoothed down the doctor’s shirt, too. “It has been said, dear man, that what a spot of brandy cannot cure has already been cured. So, if all else fails-”

Holmes grinned merrily, his knuckles like a brand on Watson’s ribs. “We shall pour the good lad a drink.”

Watson breathed out and shut his eyes, fighting off another indecent grin. “Well. Shall we go talk to her?”

*

Holmes and Watson found Mrs Andrews, as her name proved to be, tending to the midday meal in the kitchen. She readily avoided eye contact, a habit that had no doubt been enforced through social caste within the household, and continued working as she spoke, bustling about and occasionally biting orders to other workers.

“My dear lady,” Holmes said eventually, and rested a hand on her elbow. She looked up at him with wide eyes, terrified, and Watson could now see the red-rimmed quality that Holmes had already picked up on. “We are here to help, and we are _not_ here on the authority of Lord and Lady Luxemburg.”

Watson shot Holmes a warning look; social niceties were an order put in place for a _reason_ , Holmes, and he simply received a dark sideways glance that jammed in his chest. Holmes continued.

“We wish to help you, very much. Where does your husband work?”

Her gaze widened and her chin began trembling, something which she visibly fought. Watson thought to give her a sedative and demand several days without work from her superiors.

“Why do ye-” she whispered, blinking. “I. He, he works as a ground’s keeper, Colin does, for the Luxemburg mausoleum. But he is quite sick at the moment, he ‘asn’t been able to tend to his duties for perhaps a week now.” She swallowed. “So, so you see, ‘e wasn’t able to commit this crime, please don’t think of blaming my ‘usband for this theft.”

“We wouldn’t dare,” Holmes said. “And precisely how much money did you spend before resorting to grave robbing in the hopes of curing dear Colin?”

Her mouth hung, throat clicking uselessly. “I,” she said. “I. Mister Holmes.” She looked near a panic attack or heart attack, and Watson pressed his fingers against Holmes’s elbow in caution.

Holmes leaned forward conspiratorially, left his arm in Watson’s grip. “I have already said, dear woman, that we are here to help you. My friend here is Doctor Watson. _Doctor_. So please, do not shy away from us, do not lie, do not conceal. We only wish to ensure Colin’s good health.”

“You, you,” Mrs Andrews breathed, “You ain’t going to tell me Lady and Lord? Sir, it’s a _crime_ -”

Holmes pressed an urgent finger to his lips and the maid fell silent, her eyes huge and watery. “The good dying young from a simple lack of wealth is a crime, Mrs Andrews. Please take us to your husband.”

*

The sickness was due to extended exposure to, and inhalation of, decaying corpses, Watson ruled after a few minutes’ examination and a rundown of the man’s symptoms. Quite simple and yet, quite deadly, and he spent the greater part of the next six hours concocting tonics for the illness and the pain, sending Mrs Andrews on ingredient runs when required with her pockets jammed full of Holmes’s money.

Colin was mostly delirious, moaning at each press of Watson’s hand and choking on the medicines. Holmes hovered over the doctor, not commenting and not asking questions; merely watching. Watson could see he was tense – he wanted this man to live, and Watson shied to imagine how he might react to Colin’s death.

At one point into the night Holmes grabbed Watson’s arm and pulled him close, so Mrs Andrews could not hear his hushed voice.

“Is he-” Holmes swallowed, the stony set of his expression betrayed in the intensity of his eyes. “He is recovering, yes? He is taking to the tonics?”

Watson nodded, placing his hand over Holmes’s on his own forearm. Holmes released a breath, nodded shortly back at the doctor. “Very good.”

On went the night.

Mrs Andrews was retrieving more ingredients when Holmes returned from reburying the girl’s bones in a scraped out grave near her original tomb, and his forearms were black with soot and dirt where he’d pushed his white sleeves into bunches at the elbow. Watson was having a disconcertingly difficult time paying attention to the sick man in front of him.

Finally, in what must have been the early hours of the morning, Colin’s breathing smoothed out and no longer rattled desperately, and Mrs Andrews retired, faint and somewhat dehydrated from her tears. Watson guided her to her chambers, as she seemed wont to collapse, and then whispered to Holmes.

“We should go.”

He nodded, his existence localised to a myriad of angular shadows and dark curves. “Absolutely, my dear man.”

Watson took a step and Holmes mirrored him, and their eyes met with a force like magnets.

Holmes’s eyes abruptly struck Watson as the blackest kind of lightning, and he said compulsively, “I should check those too,” and then nodded to Holmes hands, where there were many superficial lacerations. “In case a similar infection to Colin’s takes particular fancy to your blood, Holmes,” and he would have testified to the fact that he was joking, except it was proving exceptionally difficult to jest when the night was pushing them close enough to feel the warmth of breath as they whispered. Watson thought he saw Holmes’s wide, rare smile.

“Of course, old boy. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

*

They walked home to 221B Baker Street, a risk to which Watson would have ordinarily protested, but he had saved a man’s life tonight and Holmes’s arm was looped through his and quite frankly, Watson felt like he could have taken on anything.

They didn’t talk much as they walked, lit up honey mead yellow beneath each gas lamp, and there was one instance when Watson glanced at his friend and found the detective appraising him with bright, sleepy eyes, a small curve to his mouth, and suddenly Watson was very aware of the feel of their arms pressed together. His grip on his cane tightened. This case felt very significant.

Holmes didn’t even object when, once safely in their apartment, Watson made him strip off his coat so the doctor could clean and possibly bandage his grazes. The detective perched on the edge of the settee and poured two small glasses of alcohol, grinning in a very small way to himself.

“A shot of brandy,” he said, raising his glass, and Watson imitated him, “in the hopes that whatever medical beast that my dear doctor here can’t cure, never finds its way to us.”

Holmes downed his share, and in the moment of distraction Watson tipped his glassful into Holmes’s wounds.

He immediately hissed, half choking on his drink and Watson grinned at the thought that he had caught Sherlock Holmes off guard.

“Antiseptic,” Watson said before Holmes could complain, and then he produced a cloth from his medical kit and began wiping away the dirt from Holmes’s injuries. He held one of Holmes’s hands in both of his, the detective’s fingers warm and calloused harshly. Watson swallowed.

“Fine work this evening, old boy.” Holmes’s voice was rougher than usual, and Watson could see the faint blue veins that ran along the inside of his arm like a spider web. “Superb. Solved the case in, what, seventeen hours, with you as an immeasurable advantage at my side. Solved the case _and_ saved a man’s life, nonetheless. Damn good work, I say.”

Holmes was not one prone to compliments. Watson felt heat on his cheeks and neck.

“Merely my profession,” he said. He switched hands with Holmes, began cleaning the other. These cuts were worse. “Nothing in which to revel but medical science, Holmes.”

“That, and the good heart of a man who wields it without incentive.” Holmes blinked at him, luminescent in the lamplight, a dull golden halo around his shadowy form.

“Incentive?” Watson murmured, glancing down before his eyes were inescapably drawn upward again. The detective painted a sharp contrast in the muted yellow light, shock of black hair and black slacks and black eyes pressed against skin and shirt the colour of the moon. Watson thought that if Holmes was near him, he needn’t ever look to the sky.

“Wealth, power, fame…” Holmes shrugged, sipped the last of the brandy from his glass. “You appear as though none of it even remotely concerns you.” He placed the cup onto the side table with delicate fingers, sounding a dull _chink_.

“I rather find my own reasons,” the doctor said, and pressed his knuckles against Holmes’s veins, felt the blood there rushing. Holmes’s heartbeat was rapid, and Watson thought, _the alcohol_.

“Pray tell, Watson. Where lays motivation for such a humble man?”

Their eyes met. Watson allowed himself the briefest of smirks.

“Where ever I must find it,” he said, and he had finished tending to Holmes’s cuts at least one whole minute ago, an extravagant amount of time to still be clutching Holmes’s wrist. The detective hadn’t appeared to notice, and that was a whole other miracle.

“Well,” Holmes sighed, smiling wickedly. “What an anomalous creature you are, my dear man. Any decent person would have at least _attempted_ to scrounge a nightly companion from this oh so prestigious profession of yours. Therein lays much motivation, one could say, but apparently not enough for my good doctor.”

Watson huffed a quick laugh, astonished.

 _Unacceptable_ , he thought, half stunned, and leaned forward to press his mouth firmly against Holmes’s.

There was a beat of stillness in which Watson felt what he would have medically described as a chasm in his chest, and then Holmes pushed back into him and grinned sharply against his mouth.

 _Unacceptable_ , Watson thought again, and then he was beaming until he thought his cheeks might crack.

The detective’s lips fell open hotly and Watson pushed a hand into his hair, feeling abruptly hit over the head, drugged, stupefied and like he needed an anchor. He found the base of Holmes’s skull and curled his fingers there tightly. Holmes instantly pressed forward, jealously incessant as always, his hands flat against Watson’s ribs like a brand.

Their lips moved together with a soft sound and Watson kept adjusting his grip, losing his hand up to the wrist in inky curls, and his mouth was numb already and it was bloody brilliant, champagne and medicine and a bright flare like he had gambled absolutely everything and gained twice as much back against all the odds on this earth. The detective shifted and the line of movement ran along both of their bodies in an arresting roll.

“My dear _fellow_ ,” Holmes breathed, sucking at ragged slices of breath already as the doctor moved onto the skin of his throat. “I was beginning to think – _oh_ – that you would _never_ realise.”

“ _You_ ,” Watson hissed, furious, and then fused their mouths together forcefully. His fingers were at the buttons on Holmes’s shirt, pulling them apart without finesse or thought, the pale material collapsing to either side of Holmes’s torso and baring the smoothest of skin, untouched snow. Their lips parted with a sticky sound. “You thought me so dull as to miss my own infatuation with you?”

Holmes laughed, hands flexing on Watson’s hips for a moment before manhandling the doctor forward onto his lap without preamble. Watson gasped and grabbed at Holmes’s chin, locked their mouths together once again.

 _Can’t be the first time_ , Watson thought inanely, _should be the thousandth time, should have been doing this since the very dawn of time_. The doctor dragged a heavy hand down the centre of Holmes’s bare chest, chasing the hard lines and angles that were the results of constant activity, wishing to feel them beneath his tongue.

“No,” Holmes said, finally breaking off for air. His hands were fumbling at the front of Watson’s trousers. “I thought you so dull as to miss _my_ infatuation with _you_.” Another searing kiss, absolutely gorgeous in its every fumble and pull. “’Tis as plain and simple as the ignorance of Scotland Yard.”

“Inappropriate,” Watson breathed, laughing and kissing him again. His legs sunk into the settee as Holmes flattened one hand to the small of his back and pulled him closer. “You are always so inappropriate, Holmes, you’re _unbearable_.”

Holmes was panting, grinning, pressing up slow and deliberate against the doctor with his shirt falling off his shoulders and bunching up around his waist. Watson moved on him like a sinful thought in church, gripping Holmes’s bare shoulders and holding his forearms to the smooth skin of Holmes’s chest, too hot to believe. Watson thought it was frivolous and indecent, but there was something completely beguiling about a well-muscled man.

“Inappropriate,” Holmes snickered, and Watson kissed his teeth, utterly taken. Holmes pushed a hand inside Watson’s smallclothes and the doctor moaned lowly in the back of his throat. He began rocking against Holmes in earnest. “I can think of a handful of sparkling additions to that word, right now.”

Watson tried for words of his own and found none, absolutely devastated, holding onto the man beneath him as though he would die if he did not. Their hips locked together, brazen and the sharp side of perfect, and Holmes’s breath stuttered.

“Holmes,” Watson spat, his eyes scrunching closed despite his best attempts to keep his gaze on the detective. The one thing in the world Watson wanted more than what was currently happening was to see Holmes’s smug composure fall apart. “If- if you begin listing synonyms I am a-afraid I might have to subdue and gag you, old boy.”

“Good _lord_.” Holmes’s hand was tighter than seemed possible on Watson’s hip and that was fitting, the probable bruise-marks that would remain. Holmes had branded Watson in every other way and Watson really wouldn’t mind carrying the detective’s fingerprints on his hipbone.

They each moved with more intensity every moment, gritty friction and Holmes’s perfect grip, perfect slide and perfect pressure. Holmes fused their mouths together and then ripped away, attacked the doctor’s throat and moaned, “By heaven, Watson, I should like to go to my knees for you.”

That was the end for Watson; he came, hot and hard over Holmes’s hand with his mind spiralling and breath evaporating. He was extremely present in his body, helpless to the pulls of streaking pleasure shooting down his spine and Holmes rocking against him. He clutched at Holmes, gasping raggedly, hot open mouth snagging on Holmes’s temple.

The detective’s voice rapidly increased in pitch on Watson’s throat, until he shouted, just once, sharp line of his teeth on Watson’s shoulder as Holmes pushed upward and finised. Holmes held their bodies tightly together, rocking through the pleasure, through the electric aftershocks, moving gently until the men were near the end of their panting.

Watson supposed he should shift from atop Holmes, readjust his clothing and even don a feeble blush as his mind settled into its normal functionality. Instead he pushed his face further into Holmes’s neck and hummed contently. Holmes brushed a hand idly over the doctor’s back.

“That,” Holmes said in a remarkably steady voice, aside from the slight rasp, “could definitely suffice as motivation. I can personally attest to the fact that there isn’t much I _wouldn’t_ do to ensure that happens again.”

Watson pushed back to look at Holmes’s face, which was lightly red and bright as the sun itself, and he smiled so wide it hurt.

“You called me stupid,” Watson said, everything about him simply reverberating happiness, despite his words. Holmes smirked but the expression barely covered his own giddiness.

“Of course I did, Watson.” Holmes held his hand to Watson’s cheek. “No other person on this _earth_ could have escaped the fact that I am utterly, helplessly dedicated to you and you alone.” He swallowed. “My mind and body. There is no question.”

Watson felt faintly embarrassed, but not enough to taint the way Holmes was looking at him. “And I suppose you knew of my dedications, yes?” Watson pressed his lips together, attempting to look cross, and Holmes promptly kissed him until Watson would not have even attempted standing up.

“I was aware,” he finally said, breaking away, smiling a terribly charming smile.

“Then good heavens, Holmes, why on earth did it take you this long to act upon it?”

Holmes kissed Watson again, breathing against his mouth with an abruptly sincere voice. “Because I needed _you_ to figure it out, Watson. This was a puzzle to be completed by you or not at all.”

*

Watson awoke to dull morning sunlight and Holmes’s arm slung over his side, drawing him into an extremely warm embrace. He took one deep breath, fiercely happy, and somehow Holmes knew he was awake.

Damn Holmes. He always, always knew.

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr [here](http://ultraradstudentprincess.tumblr.com/)


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